


Le Fils aux Cheveux de Lin

by akaidemic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: BIG SEASON 5 SPOILERS DO NOT THREAD, Big Angst Introspection hours, Honestly this fic loosely mentions anyone jonah ever got jiggy with, M/M, Writing letters to your dead ex is self care., also specific headcanon jonah here but lets not just blatantly say what, its real jonah angst hours here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24325429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaidemic/pseuds/akaidemic
Summary: After the Great Undoing of Everything That Was, Jonah Magnus is forced to deal with his own company. He dreads it.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus, Peter Lukas/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	Le Fils aux Cheveux de Lin

**Author's Note:**

> This shit has mad spoilers so if you're not caught up save yourself and get outta here!

There were no edges to the world that Jonah Magnus saw.

She stretched out, endlessly, towards a horizon and a curve that didn’t exist. There was nothing in existence that escaped his omniscience, at this point. He could compare it to the way as a child, he’d been convinced he’d been able to see through objects. He wasn’t. It was simply that holding an object before one eye, and not the other, creates the illusion of obscurity and clarity at the same time. Looking out over the world, at times, he could feel that now centuries old feeling of curiosity wash over him.

The world ached. She groaned under the strain of the wreckage that covered her soil and penetrated to the layers deep within. Her noise, as well as any noise, was kept at bay by the thick glass of the window. In this manner, the outside was nothing more than moving pictures unless he willed it to be more than that. The quiet was… preferable.

He exhaled sharply through his nose and took his hand off the glass. It was the same as yesterday, and the day before that and any day that would come. He’d won.

He’d won and he’d stopped the world on her axis. Grabbed his moment of victory and made it eternal. Endless.

With a sigh, he sat down at his desk. Something in him had imagined, or even dreamed about something as gaudy as a throne room once the plan would succeed. After all, he sat on top of the world now. But Jonah had always felt more at home behind a desk. There was a sense of security in the way one could isolate themselves in their studies. A pursuit for knowledge was physically idle and mentally challenging and as a child and later adolescent, unfit for the labour his peers engaged in, Jonah Magnus found his home among the books.

And yet now, they were unreadable. There was no knowledge he could pull from them he could not will into his mind. He’d surpassed the pursuit, stopping only short from becoming the concept of knowledge itself. If he wanted, he could sit at this desk and know everything there was to know. Skip the lines, go straight to the finish. Collect no money.

Was there satisfaction to be found in this? If so, he’d have to learn to find it.

Another sigh, and the silence was broken by the rustling of paper and the clicking of a pen. Something in him had always remained nostalgic for the smell of ink, but times change. He listened to the faint ghosts of noise from behind the glass window. The unusual light of the impossible sky left moving patterns of shadow and light on the blank paper on his desk.

He began writing.

> _“Dear Peter,_
> 
> _I hope you are well. Most likely not, but considering the fact that this letter is unlikely to be sent, it doesn't quite matter._
> 
> _I am writing because I have not spoken to anything since we’ve parted. Perhaps a tape-recorder, once, but I don’t consider that quite the conversation. No, it’s been awfully quiet here. Uncomfortably so, I will admit._
> 
> _I_ _know you craved the quiet, but I have found myself unable to bear it. I figured that perhaps the presence of you, or the delight of denying you your coveted isolation was simply a distraction amidst the race to outrun death. Now I fear I simply attempted to tame you, because the isolation instils a terror in me which I had not foreseen. Or which I denied. Perhaps._
> 
> _Looking back, a fear of death seems like a natural, almost noble pursuit. Everyone dreads the moment existence comes to an end. A fear of loneliness is childish in comparison._
> 
> _But there are still bones in this room that tell me that I have the ability to regret, somewhat. That perhaps I at some point cared. I know you asked me if I had cared, or if he, like every other soul unfortunate enough to find themselves tangled up into mine, was a steppingstone to my ambition._
> 
> _The short answer is "maybe" . The long answer is "I don't know"._
> 
> _I_ _think maybe somewhere along the way I simply wanted to be coveted too, as I had never been.”_

He looked up. Somewhere, the Eye had sparked. A merry-go-round, still moving and singing. Interesting, but nothing to be worried about, he figured as he looked back at the paper.

> _“I envy you, Peter. I am horrified at your fate and yet a part of me has come to envy it, which has been confusing to say the least. I’ve spent my life and other’s lives dedicated to the defiance of any form of ending and now that eternity is so well within my grasp, I have found my fist to be painfully empty._
> 
> _Was it everything I had hoped for?_
> 
> _Not at all.”_

He stared at those last words. Writing them down felt different from hearing their echoes in the back of his mind. They felt like a defeat, a melancholy that churned in his chest into the shape of insult. He grimaced and crossed the words out.

> _“It’s more complicated than that.”_

He won. His victory was endless and so was his world. As wretched and foul as she was, his world would be one for the ages with him on top. With the name he had so carefully chosen known and revered by everyone.

Jonah Magnus. Ruler of the impossible world.

And yet the room was quiet. Lonely. And he knew, it would only get lonelier from here on out. He’d traded in the pleasantries he had enjoyed for the concept of eternity simply because he had had one and never tasted the other. Jonah had always wanted that which he couldn’t have. A man obsessed with isolation, a personhood, the knowledge to defy what scared him. And now, soon the world would be nothing but him and the desk he sat at. Though perhaps that was how it’d always been.

He continued.

> _“Perhaps it was never about death. Maybe it has always been about being forgotten, about not being known by anyone. Perhaps that is truly the last and greatest horror known to us. If something ends and nothing is there to document its existence, has it ever existed at all and even if there was, at what point does the trace of one’s life lose meaning?_
> 
> _I have spent so long trying to become who I needed to be, the thought of my existence being forgotten and denied as it was when I came into this world pains me more than any loss I’ve experienced._
> 
> _I don’t want to be forgotten, Peter.”_

There is no sound as Jonah Magnus gets up from his desk, his fingers habitually sliding over a withered skull with a touch that would never hold more answers than it had always contained questions.

If he focused, he could hear it. Beneath the quiet he could hear their footsteps, their laughter. He could feel threads of web tickle at the back of his neck. A disgusting and imaginary hope, wrecking through his impossible world towards him.

He wasn’t afraid, God no. But Jonah felt uneasy. There was a feeling in his chest that strangely resembled an anxiety he’d never felt before. A stinging doubt that there was a chance that despite his efforts, the fickle nature of the being he relied on was going not going to work in his favour. But this was his impossible world. His final, and eternal work.

_All things end, and every step you take, whatever direction you may choose, only brings you closer to it._

He smiled as he listened to the avatar’s words.

Perhaps.

But never him.

After all, he would be unforgotten.

Jonah Magnus would be endless.


End file.
